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Bunratty Castle top

Civil rule was basically local, with a noble providing protection to surrounding serfs in exchange for their labor. Castles dotted the European countryside. And the ones still standing are very popular destinations for today's travelers—many offering entertainments and banquets to bring the period alive. An evening at Bunratty castle, in western Ireland, is a lot of fun. You start off with some mead, a fermented honey-based libation and choose a lord and lady for the evening. They’re recreating a time from the late middle ages, but castle life was pretty much the same throughout the period...You can see how the lords and ladies lived including how they took their daily dinner. Entertainment tempered the noisy scene as castle dwellers all ate together, sharing the same food, in the main hall. Soups, stews and bread predominated as easy ways to serve the large numbers. You could say it was one big happy family—hanging together, for safety, inside thick, high walls.

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For more details, check out Life in a Medieval Castle by Joseph and Frances Gies. Also, see the website Life in a Medieval Castle. Information about Bunratty Castle itself can be found at www.gardensireland.com.

 

Rothenburg top

You see, a castle was designed to withstand a long siege. Attackers could hurl missiles and deseased dead bodies, and shoot fire-tipped arrows, but mostly they just hoped to starve out the defenders—or bribe someone to open the gates. A castle like this worked well as long as the populace had enough warning of attack to get inside. So, naturally people liked to live close—thus the towns surrounding the castles.

Rothenburg was just such a town. The castle’s gone but the town lives on.

Today it's certainly one of the best preserved from the medieval world—so well-preserved it's entire economy is now based on tourism. Thousands of visitors crowd its streets every day, but it's still a fine place to get the feel of 800 years ago.

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For more information about Rothenburg walking tours, visit www.nightwatchman.de. For more information about Rothenburg, go to http://www.rothenburg.de.

 

Maulbronn Abbey top

Monasteries sprouted up all over Europe, basically in the hinterlandsmdash;as they sought to find a life closer to God—remote from all this very worldly business.

Perhaps the most successful were the Cistercian monks. The Maulbronn Abbey in Southern Germany is typical--austere, but graceful and peaceful in design. The order was founded at the end of the 11th century as an offshoot of the Benedictines and quickly spread all over Europe. Monks spent their days in prayer, study, and manual labor. Cistercians' sincere desire to be self-sufficient and independent from the outside world led to an unforeseen outcomemdash;they created a huge economic empire and dominated just about any market they entered. Monks had the time and learning to invent machinery, experiment with wool production and crop rotationmdash;and develop wine-making techniques that are still in use. How'd they get into wine? The church needed it for communion and evidently the monks needed it to survive. St. Benedict had hoped his monks could abstain, but finally agreed each should limit his wine consumption to a pint a day. Monks grumbled, but tried.

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For more on the history of wine, read The Oxford Companion to Wine edited by Jancis Robinson.

 

The Black Death top

And then catastrophe struckmdash;in the form of the Black Death. Plague arrived in Europe in the year 1347. Not just a one-shot epidemic, it returned again and again untilmdash;100 years later Europe's population stood at about half of what it had been before the plague.

100 years later Europe’s population is estimated to have shrunk to about half of what it was before the plague.

The medieval hospital at Beaune is a good spot to think about some of the consequences. Commissioned at the end of the middle ages by a fabulously wealthy merchant, it epitomized the new thinking concerning medicine. Before the Black Death, hospitals had basically been places to die, now they became places to be healed. Doctors took the first steps toward a scientific approach to medicine with more practical studies, and cities instituted public health commissions. This hospital served the soul as well as the body, with wonderful works of art in place for the pleasure--and edification of its patients...But the plague had shaken people's confidence in their ability to understand God. A great questioning took hold.

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For more on the plague, read The Black Death by Robert S. Gottfried. For information about the medieval hospital at Beaune, visit www.hospices-de-beaune.com.

 



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Links

For more information about Rothenburg walking tours, visit www.nightwatchman.de.

For more on the history of wine, read The Oxford Companion to Wine edited by Jancis Robinson.

For information about the medieval hospital at Beaune, visit www.hospices-de-beaune.com.